Dr Michael Brown

Lecturer in Modern British History

Profile

I am a cultural historian of modern Britain (roughly 1760-1914), interested in medicine and surgery, gender, the body, emotions, and war. My last major research project explored the emotions of nineteenth-century British surgery, and demonstrated the powerful yet changing role that feelings played in shaping surgical identities, and in structuring relations between surgeons and their patients. This research has been published in several journal articles and in my last book, Emotions and Surgery in Britain, 1793-1912 (Cambridge University Press, 2022).

My current research, funded by an AHRC Standard Grant, is undertaken in collaboration with Professor Joanne Begiato of the London College of Fashion and explores the history of the hand in Victorian Britain and its multiple implications for embodiment and identity both in the past and today. We are currently also developing another major research project that explores the material and emotional history of popular militarism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Selected Publications

Emotions and Surgery in Britain, 1793-1912
Brown, M. 31/10/2022 Cambridge : Cambridge University Press. 324 p. ISBN: 9781108834841.
Book

Martial Masculinities: Experiencing and Imagining the Military in the Long Nineteenth Century
Brown, M., Barry, A.M., Begiato, J. 30/08/2019 Manchester : Manchester University Press. 288 p. ISBN: 9781526135629.
Book

Exhibiting Tommy Atkins: senses, spectacle, and military modernity in late Victorian Britain
Brown, M., Begiato, J. 18/07/2025 In: Historical Research. 25 p.
Journal article

Radical Exposure: Religion, Masculinity, and Politics in the William Bengo’ Collyer Scandal
Begiato, J., Brown, M. 27/08/2024 In: History of European Ideas. 21 p.
Journal article

Wounds and Wonder: Emotion, Imagination and War in the Cultures of Romantic Surgery
Brown, M. 17/06/2020 In: Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies. 43, 2, p. 239-259. 21 p.
Journal article

  • Centre for War and Diplomacy